Brand Nigeria: X-raying the branding and rebranding efforts so far
By Kasim Bakare
In the 21st century, nation branding has become a big business, and its practitioners see their line of work as psychological – beyond mere sloganeering. Simply put, every nation has the task of looking inward, discovering and finding its place in the world. In other words, beyond coining a tagline or producing a suite of logos, nation branding experts go for deeper meanings. They believe they can fix upon, and excavate, a place’s very identity, or at least an identity, something that can guide a government in figuring out how to rise in the esteem of its neighbours, how to allocate its resources, how best to compose the face it presents to the world.
The meaning of branding goes beyond just names, marks and labels. It captures relationships, experiences and states of mind. Perhaps that was why David Ogilvy, the “Father of Advertising”, defined the brand as the intangible sum of a product’s attributes. The above truism also applies to the brand management of nations. For nation-brands, the brand identity of a country goes beyond just the name and geographically defined territory pre-requisite of a state. A nation brand consists of all structures, sub-structures and infrastructure put in place to enhance the brand’s equity and essence.
A nation brand is, first of all, a strong idea, a well-chosen and formed place identify based on expectations, feelings, experience. A country needs to have its brand to make a good impression, to form a number of positive associations, and support this impression with user experience between the brand and its audience, while creation of a successful brand for the country, accentuation of its advantages over other countries will contribute to its popularity. Therefore, in order to create a successful brand for a territory, it is necessary to consider its uniqueness, ideology, and justification of factors—formation of expectations and their justifiability.
For the Nigerian state, efforts at branding and re-branding the nation by successive administrations, especially in the last two decades, have not been quite successful. The country’s public space and discourse have been replete with re-branding initiatives since the Murtala Mohammed/Olusegun Obasanjo military government (1975-1979). Shortly after the Shehu Shagari-led civilian interlude, the Mohammadu Buhari/Tunde Idiagbon regime (1983-1985) launched the War against Indiscipline (WAI) campaign. This was followed by the MAMSER and Not in Our Character initiatives, promoted by the Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha dictatorships, respectively (1985-1998).
While the several campaigns during the military era focused on portraying Nigeria as a political giant in the continent and the need for its citizens to embrace national ethos and values, successive administrations from the regime of President Olusegun Obasanjo(1999-2007), Umar Yar’adua(2007-2010), Goodluck Jonathan(2010-2015), Muhammadu Buhar i(2015-Date) focused on changing the national psyche and enhancing tourism and attracting foreign direct investment through several image laundering campaigns. Many of these interventions were either short-lived due to military interventions or the sincerity of the government in power to see the campaigns through.
The return to civil rule, however, witnessed a revamping of image laundering in the country as exemplified by the Heart of Africa and Image Re-branding policies of the Obasanjo (1999-2007) and Yar’Adua (2007-2010) administrations, respectively. The Yar’adua image re-branding project was the most comprehensive and expensive nation-branding initiative yet. It had the motto “Nigeria: Good People, Great Nation” and was aimed at “accelerating Nigeria’s development through foreign investment and tourism”.
The campaign was meant to further re-enforce the administration’s campaign against corruption and unwholesome practices. In recent times, there were the “Change begins With Me’ and “Not in My Country” campaigns during the present administration. In spite of the vigorous campaigns and huge investments on these projects, why did they fail to achieve and deliver on expected outcomes by the branding initiators and promoters?
A holistic review of the campaigns will suffice for this analysisThe Heart of Africa project was conceptualised and sold to the Obasanjo administration by lawyer-turned branding expert, Leke Alder, lead consultant at Alder Consulting. Writing on the idea behind the project, Alder reiterated that it was conceptualized as “a programme for Nigeria’s image management and progression” with the primary objective to promote Nigeria’s national brand assets while addressing the brand ‘eroders’ confronting the nation.
After costing the country over N1 billion, as later revealed by the late Prof. Dora Akunyili when she became the Minister of Information, the exercise was ditched, having failed to deliver on its promise. It was later discovered that the proposition, Heart of Africa, was not original to Nigeria as some other countries were already using the proposition ahead of Nigeria.
Having discarded the Heart of Africa proposition, the Nigerian government on March, 19, 2009 announced a new “rebranding” programme with the theme: Good People Great Nation”. Besides being anchored chiefly on her dissatisfaction with the previous campaign, Akunyili’s nation branding project was also rather reactive; deeply influenced by her experience at a South African airport where she claimed her bag was stolen. But it was clear from the day the initiative was launched that it was just a project that was designed with the hope of changing what was presented by government as the unacceptable
On September, 8, 2016, the Nigerian government announced another rebranding initiative tagged “The Change begins with Me”. The campaign was to promote attitudinal change and a re-orientation of the nation’s value system again, the campaign was spearheaded by another Minister of Information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed. The initiative appeared to have been coined from the ‘Change’ thematic campaign slogan for the president in 2015. However, it became enmeshed in controversy when a private citizen alleged that the campaign was a content of a proposal he wrote to government for the rebranding project. The bad press generated from the controversy was the laststraw that broke the camel’s back.
Quite significantly, there was a private initiative by a concerned citizen, Akin Fadeyi, in what he termed; “Not in My country”. It was an effort to stem the tide of corruption and unwholesome practices in private and public spheres through attitudinal change. This audacious move by a private citizen was, however, embraced with cautious optimism as many felt it was another initiative in the mould of government past interventions. Specifically, there were concerns that the real identities of the promoters of the campaign were people in government using the campaign to leverage government’s influence. Generally speaking, there are diverse reasons responsible for the failure of the nation’s attempts at branding and re-branding at different times of our political history.
In the first instance, the drivers of the Nigerian branding projects only understood branding from the elementary point of view. They created a proposition to reflect what they wished the world to see and feel about Nigeria. Whilst they focused on the awareness aspect of the marketing project, the experiential side of the mix was largely ignored.
Commenting on this, Temitope Jemerigbe, MD, DKK, had this to say: “A lot of reasons can be adduced for the failures associated with previous rebranding efforts by Nigeria. For all the reasons, that which seems to merit further enquiry is that which suggests that the problem lies with the brand. There are those who believe that brand Nigeria has never been clearly defined, and its promise never clearly articulated – which is why all the brand messages have been at odds with the public.
Secondly, most citizens they say, have never believed in or owned the campaigns or projects. Such campaigns are usually emotive and citizens are supposed to own or believe the project. Mallam Yusuf Alli (SAN), during a recent interview with MARKETING EDGE, had this to say about Nigeria’s national ethos and values viz-a-viz her past efforts at rebranding: “If you want to do institutional changes, it has to start from the bottom. That is what is wrong with the fight against corruption. You can’t fight corruption from the top. Look at War Against Indiscipline (WAI) instituted during the Buhari/Idiagbon regime, we were all forced to queue with soldiers holding whips. Immediately the soldiers left, we went back to our old ways because it is not in our system. Look at our driving culture. People beat the traffic light because obeying traffic lights is not engrained in their system. If people are properly moulded, tutored, mentored or channeled, they will get it right.”
Lastly, the socio-economic indices needed to drive these campaigns were either non-existent or fast eroding. This was a major baggage for the drivers and proponents of rebranding Nigeria.
In spite of the aforementioned reasons, all hopes are not lost on achieving desired results in future campaigns if the right thing is done in re-jigging the rebranding campaign.
On her part, Temitope Jemerigbe opined there is need to have a deep dive into the brand-Nigeria. “Not just a SWOT analysis, but a policy-based determination of what Nigeria means, what we want it to mean to the citizenry, how we want to feel about Nigeria and more importantly, make them become proud of Nigeria.”
The question of what makes a nation a nation has been eternally troubled even as nation brand experts hold that the metabolism of a country is longer and slower than that of a product or a company. Every modern nation-state has built itself around some perceived essence, some identity regarded as unique, even if it’s a mixture of truth and lies, exclusions and exaggerations.
Other nation branding projects fail because, mainly, governments don’t have the capabilities to manage the project strategies. More often, the calculations of politics enter into it, or a newly elected government rolls back its predecessor’s ideas, or the venture relies on superficial advertising.
While it should be noted that it takes more than mere rebranding to fix a nation, calculated efforts should be put in to heal Nigeria and her citizens, especially at this critical period.
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